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Making nice music: a startup company called Overture Technologies, Bethesda, Maryland, is the brainchild of Fannie Mae's former CIO Bill Kelvie (left). The company boasts other ex-GSE executives, including Freddie Mac's former Loan Prospector veteran Pete Maselli (right).

Article Excerpt
Way back when, there were two rival executives working on top-level technology projects at rival billion-dollar enterprises. But they were no ordinary enterprises--they were government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). And if the two ever found themselves side by side, say, at a bar, they were not likely to talk about what they'd been doing at work that day. [??] Today these two guys talk every day about work because they both work at the same small technology company. But back in the day, one headed development of Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter[R], the other Freddie Mae's Loan Prospector[R]. [??] The guy from Fannie Mae and the one from Freddie Mac now work at Bethesda, Maryland-based Overture Technologies. In fact, most of the top executives at Overture came from either one or the other of the big government-sponsored enterprises. So, it would be no stretch of the imagination to assume a big part of what Overture Technologies does is automated underwriting. [??] Overture was founded by Bill Kelvie, formerly chief information officer at Fannie Mae and leader of the team that developed Desktop Underwriter. One of his most recent hires was Peter Maselli, a 20-year veteran of Freddie Mac and the former general manager of Loan Prospector, its automated underwriting product. [??] At Overture, Maselli steps into a different role, that of chief marketing officer--which isn't such a stretch because, as he notes, "I actively led the marketing effort for Loan Prospector at Freddie Mac. I was very visible in the industry and developed many relationships that are useful in my role with Overture."

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Maselli was working with Loan Prospector "at the same time my group was developing Desktop Underwriter, and the competition between the agencies was very, very substantial," recalls Kelvie.

"We still trade stories every week about things that happened," Maselli laughs.

As do others--such as John Gibbons, Freddie Mac's former chief financial officer who is now Overture's vice chairman and head of business development, and Andrew Weiss, now Overture's chief operating officer and chief technology officer, who worked with Kelvie for 10 years at Fannie Mae. Overture is a veritable brain trust of former GSE senior execs.

Today they all sit in the same conference room and strategize for a new company. But that doesn't mean they don't dredge up old war stories every now and then.

"One of us will say, 'What were you thinking when this happened?' I still find it fascinating, and often very relevant to today's challenges," says Maselli.

From student loans to mortgages

To quote Overture Technologies' own promotional material, the company provides technology that accelerates and standardizes decision-making for thorny business problems. If this deceptively simple explanation causes the reader to think, "Aha, automated underwriting systems," that would be correct. Considering Kelvie's background, one also would assume that after leaving Fannie Mae he quickly jumped into developing automated underwriting systems (AUS) for the mortgage industry. In fact, he first took a little detour.

Overture Technologies was founded in 2000 to apply the same kind of automated...